It Isn't a Place It's a Person
by A Middle Distance Maximum
Summary: Written for Starvation's one shot challenge. Mj spoilers. Johanna finds herself back in Seven after the Rebellion, rediscovering her past regrets. Somehow, they don't seem so horrible anymore. They might even help show her what the future has in store.


**Hey all!**

**So, this is written for Starvation's One-shot Challenge. The prompt was home, and I thought who better than Johanna to take us on a little home adventure. It may be a little confusing with the times, but it goes seventeen year old Johanna, then Johanna right after the rebellion. **

**Anyways, enjoy!

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**I leaned over top of him, my hair dangling around my face, brushing his bare chest as his hands ran rhythmically over my body. His fingers danced until they reached my bra clasp, and with the slightest cock of his eyebrow the clasp released. Before I knew it, my underwear joined my bra on the cold stone floor.

The candle light flickered menacingly with the motions of our bodies. I knew it was supposed to be painful the first time, but I didn't feel pain. I must've be drunk. Not on alcohol like my father, but happiness maybe. Or excitement. Or anxiety.

"Jo?" He asked me breathlessly, his lips pressed against my jaw.

"Mmmm," I said catching his roaming hand in my own. "What is it?"

"What are we doing?"

I froze and detached myself from his sweaty body. In the heat of passion he was even sexier, cinnamon hair tousled in every direction, hazel eyes gleaming with delight. I wanted him so bad. What was he doing?

"We _were_ having sex," I explained gruffly, annoyed when he didn't pull me back to him.

A hand grazed my arm. "I want to make sure your okay with this. We can't undo what we've done," he explained cautiously. I eyed him carefully with a disgusted expression. He'd never been the considerate type.

"Then let's just keep going," I offered. My entire body was buzzing with some emotion that I couldn't place. I just knew that I needed him. And I needed an explanation for my friends as to where we went after meeting outside of the store.

And that's what we did. We kept going. Later I despised him for it, even though he tried to make sure I was alright. I despised myself for being so horrendously delusional that I would be happy after. I despised the world for not nurturing me into a smart young woman; for instead making me vain and incredibly naive.

He was on that bench during the Reaping. From my place among the seventeen year olds I saw him sitting that obnoxious style, making sure to take up as much room as humanly possible. It was two weeks after that night, and we had hardly spoken a word. Once the deed was done his interest in me seemed to fade, and my desire for him intensified.

My name was called. I walked onto the dais with no one volunteering for me. In the Justice Building he visited me after my drunken father and terrified mother. I promise to win so that she wouldn't be stuck with father, because no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to take care of him herself.

The boy showed up, looking extremely pleased as any nineteen year old would look after being freed from the Reaping.

"Somehow I knew this was coming," he commented, taking interest in the porticoes on the opposite side of the room where a Peacekeeper stood.

I crossed my arms over my chest as though he might steal something from me. Then I realized he had taken everything he could already. My hatred seemed to well up inside of me and I began to lash at him. He stood there, my insults rebounding off of him and his smug grin.

After my time must've surely been up for visitors, he spoke. "Home isn't a place, Johanna. It's a person." He dug for a while in his pocket and extracted a long gold chain. Attached to it was a pendant shaped much like the bench we met on those weeks ago. The jewelery contradicted what he was saying, but I reached out and clasped it in my fingers.

"You're allowed a token," he said simply. "Take it. I was going to give it to you anyways."

He was going to give it to me anyways? I thought maybe it was a joke, but the glint in his eyes told me otherwise. He was just waiting to make sure I didn't get Reaped to talk to me again.

I considered throwing it back in his face, but what else would I have had as a token? Nothing. Just images in my mind that could be destroyed as easily as I was. An actual object would last longer than my life.

I didn't kiss him. Or hug him. But the promise that there would be _someone_ waiting for me, back in Seven is what got me through those games. And it's his irregularly shaped pendant I wish I could twist between my fingers as I return.

He's sitting casually on the bench of course, his long strong arms splayed out across the back, his cinnamon hair flapping in the breeze as he takes in the scene of the bustling square with those dark hazel eyes. If I didn't know who he is, or the way he is, I would've mistaken him for one of those odd men that just stays for hours, watching people for their own pleasure.

I've made my rounds today, and I know what I must do, but he's the last one on my list. Somehow, I'm hardly fazed as I step out of the shop and stroll down the walkway to the bench. I've only done this once before. Just that one night which I'm sure we both remember in a incredibly vivid way. Attempting to recall exactly why we did what we did, I nearly pass right by him. Luckily, I sense the perking of his hard muscled body at my passing.

"Johanna Mason," he says in exasperation. I perk my eyebrows up as his eyes run up and down the expanse of my body greedily. I even consider twirling for effect, but then I recall Katniss twirling in that ridiculous wedding gown and this whole occasion suddenly becomes much more sombre. "I heard rumours that you were here. As much as I didn't want to, I couldn't help but believe them."

I spread my arms out widely and shrug. "I had to come back sooner or later," I admit wearily, easing onto the bench beside him as he slides aside.

"And what a place to come back to," he grins with mirth. His hand strokes the bench, just as it had all of those years ago. "Home."

I turn and face him. Even though I've lost a lot of weight recently, I can't help but notice how tiny I am compared to him. "You haven't changed in the slightest," I inform him.

The man's eyebrows shoot up with excitement. "Neither have you. Still as beautiful as before. If you think about it hard, not that much has changed. We sat here before. I sat here when you were Reaped. Nothing's been destroyed. Do you still have that necklace?"

I sigh. He really hasn't changed; hardly any acknowledgement of other's mental state. Then again, I was always the exact same. "Our lives have changed. Well, mine has," I say drearily. "And no, I don't. They took it from me in the Capitol." This conversation isn't going exactly where I planned. Come to think of it, I hadn't planned for anything to happen. Maybe a few laughs about how stupid we had been, and how stupid we still are.

"Right..." he says uncomfortably, looking away into the crowd of people, clearly pretending to be searching for someone.

It's silent for a moment, and we let the noises of conversations drifting past fill the void where our voices were. A little girl stumbles out of a store and calls for her mom. He stiffens suddenly, but a blonde woman rushes out and scoops the girl into her arms, calming him considerably.

"There more I think about it, there more I realize that night was the last bit of fun I ever had," I play with a loose thread on my shirt hem. My insides do an odd sort of flip as his eyes rest on me.

I expect him to offer another night of youthful adventure, but he doesn't. "I can't give you that anymore."

Nodding, I begin to push up from the bench for an unknown reason. I didn't come here to have sex. He knows that. I know that. _But what did I come here for?_

"What is it your looking for, Johanna?" The man asks interestedly before I can escape and figure out what it is I'm doing.

My eyes burn suddenly, and the edges of my vision condense into a solid blur. I peer at a person passing by, who I may or may not recognize from before the rebellion. All of these people, they know who I am. I'm Johanna Mason, the girl who no one expected to win the Hunger Games. I'm that one who was captured and tortured by the Capitol, in more disgusting ways than a mind could conjure the thought of. I don't know who any of them are. Not one. Their names have slipped my mind. We'll, to be honest I never took the time to know any of their names, but it wouldn't have mattered. It would've all left me. Just like Seven has. It's left me. It plain to see that I'm completely lost here; stuck in a different world full of things that take too much energy to figure out.

"A home," I say as steadily as I can manage. "I think. I don't know."

He smiles, that broad arrogant, beautiful smile that warms me up the tiniest bit; reassures me that something could finally be right in my life. "After..." he beings, pondering deeply on that night, two weeks before my Reaping.

"Before you took one of the only things I had left," I grin. I hated him at the time. I hated myself, and everything and everyone around me for not stopping me. I don't regret it now.

"Johanna," his hazel eyes pierce into me, and I find myself slowly slinking back onto the bench. "You had everything. You lost it when you won the Games. I think that night might've made you stronger, even though you had been one of the strongest people I knew. Anyways, after we had sex, and then you were Reaped, I knew you would never come back to me in that way. I knew you wouldn't come back to Seven and be as you were before. It was extremely plain that everything was different, and that the most headstrong woman I knew had somehow wound up lost."

Part of me wants to object, and tell him that he's wrong, that he was always wrong and always stupid. The better part of me knots up into a ball that will be difficult to unwind, and find a solution for. This tells me I'm uncomfortable, because this man is correct. I was lost. I still am. Still searching endlessly for the path. Or any path for that matter.

"You're right," I say quietly.

He gasps loudly. "I'm right? Did you-? Johanna Mason just said that I'm right?" A bewildered laugh escapes from his mouth.

I smile quickly enough that he doesn't notice, and then I scowl. "Don't get used to it. It won't happen again." As he chuckles for a few more seconds I realize that it's time for me to leave.

The little girl who had seemed separated from her mother before, toddles happily towards us as her mother unwraps a piece of candy for her. They slow within a few feet of us and the giddy smile slips from the little girl's lips.

He stands up and runs a hand nervously through his hair. "Johanna, this is my wife and my daughter," he introduces us. His wife doesn't seem particularly happy with my presence, but his little girl looks considers me with interest. She can't be more than two years old. How did I manage to not know he was married? The girl blabs something happily and he scoops her up into his arms and holds her close.

"I found what I was looking for Johanna, and I didn't even deserve it," he tells me with a sad smile. His little girl puts a curious hand on his face and he gently pries it off. "You deserve better than everyone else. Seven isn't your home anymore, I know it isn't."

I slightly taken aback by his blunt comment. I blink, unsure of how to extract myself from the situation. His eyes grow wide and glimmer mischievously.

"Remember, home isn't a place. It's a person," he bites his lips to stop from laughing at some distant recollection, and grasps his wife's hand. Together, they turn around and leave me behind them; in their past.

A large television screen near the Justice Building catches my eye. It's difficult to make out the image on it right away, but I manage to eventually, and am unsurprised to see Gale Hawthorne standing awkwardly in the foreground. He's been all over the media these days. I scoff and turn my back to him.

There's rumours about him, that he killed Katniss' sister. Why can he find a new place to people, and new people to be around? Why does he deserve it?

He doesn't. People don't get what they deserve. They get what they fight for.

I glance cautiously back to Hawthorne, and the image of his rugged body sends shivers through my spine. I instantly know that we're both the most avid warriors for what we want.

Home.

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**Let me know your thoughts! =)**


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